Some of my older students will work hard at reading if the reading is about something they already love. For one of them, that was anime.
So I started writing nonfiction reader’s theaters about anime and manga. Each one has two parts, for a student and a teacher, tutor or stronger reader, and each adds one reading skill, one grammar skill and one step toward sixth-grade writing.
The History of Anime. From a 1917 short film to a worldwide art form. One part is written at about a second to third grade level and the other at sixth grade, so two readers at different levels cover the same content.
Page vs. Screen: How Manga Becomes Anime. A fan and an animator disagree about what an adaptation adds. Students learn to analyze a scene with Choice, Evidence, Effect, and write a claim paragraph.
Survive the Week: How a Manga Lives or Dies. A new manga artist learns how a weekly magazine decides which series continue. Students trace cause and effect and write an objective summary.
The example series in these scripts are invented for the lessons, so students don’t need to know any particular manga or anime.
